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Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Cam ECS - Dual-purpose Blaster?

When news of the Nerf N-Strike Elite "Cam ECS", a lot of folks were kind of underwhelmed by the ancient technology the video camera seemed to work off of. As such, they were also a bit floored by the expected prices ($70?) for this new battle-cam blaster. Me, being the crazy nut that I am, was thinking one thing: make it a Laser Tag blaster! Well... I think this blaster might have potential to be another Dual-purpose blaster. "What do you mean by that, Mr. Bazookafied?" Sit down and hear me out!

I built a blaster a long time ago called the "Durango". It was a Red Strike Longshot with a Front-Gun integration that housed Laser Challenge Radar Extreme internals. The top barrel functioned as a normal Nerf blaster. The bottom, instead of firing another dart, it was housed with laser Tag internals, cleverly integrated throughout the blaster. The only outward signs of this being a Laser Tag blaster was the reload button and the power switch. Everything else, from lights to the speaker to the other buttons, were integrated into the Longshot. I built it to be used in indoor Laser Tag games held on campus, which admittedly didn't happen very frequently. The blaster ended up serving more as an example of how it could be done. A two-in-one blaster for both of my hobbies.

The Cam ECS would make a great laser tag rifle BUT... because of it's design and setup, it may serve better in the same way the Durango did. House the laser tag internals in the portion of the blaster that were used for the battle camera and retain the Flywheel-driven Dart blaster internals below for a Dual-purpose design. Without seeing the internals, it's tough to be able to tell... but doing this sort of a mod would help make the burden of purchasing an expensive blaster a little easier if it could be used for both my hobbies like the Durango before it.